


Soft You, Now...

by consultingnerdofmanythings



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Depression, Drowning, Drugs, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Mourning, Pining, References to Hamlet, Suicide, Trigger warnings inside, effects of death on other people
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-02-26 01:07:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13224999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/consultingnerdofmanythings/pseuds/consultingnerdofmanythings
Summary: Sherlock commits suicide by drowning himself. Inspired by the story of the character Ophelia from William Shakespeare's "Hamlet."





	1. The Muddy Death

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, guys.   
> Thank you for checking out my story. Please, oh please, heed the trigger warning at the beginning of this chapter.   
> Aside from that, I hope you enjoy my work. I apologize for any mistakes. I try very hard to catch all of them when I proofread, but I am only human, and there are likely to be a few that escaped me.   
> Disclaimer: I do not own BBC Sherlock.   
> -WeWillForeverBeYoung

**WARNING: IF YOU ARE EASILY TRIGGERED BY MENTIONS OF SUICIDE OR ATTEMPTS AT SUICIDE BEING DEPICTED IN FICTION, PLEASE DO NOT READ THIS FANFIC. PLEASE EXERCISE DISCRETION AND CLICK OFF THIS FANFIC. PRACTICE SELF CARE AND SPEND YOUR TIME WITH ANOTHER FANFIC.**

_There is a willow grows aslant a brook,_

_That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;_

_There with fantastic garlands did she come_

_Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples_

_That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,_

_But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:_

_There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds_

_Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;_

_When down her weedy trophies and herself_

_Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;_

_And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:_

_Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;_

_As one incapable of her own distress,_

_Or like a creature native and indued_

_Unto that element: but long it could not be_

_Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,_

_Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay_

_To muddy death._

-William Shakespeare’s _Hamlet,_ Act IV, scene iv, lines 164-181

_~_

It was out of rather out of morbid curiosity instead of suicidal ideation that he had researched the effects of drowning on the human body and those effects experienced by a drowning person in their final moments.

He was in his third year of university, and at that time, he was interested in chemistry and chemistry alone. He had no inkling of becoming an investigator of any kind, and since all the chemistry work he was working with was devoid of any medical application, he had no reason to be researching about such a death. And yet, he had opened a search engine on his computer late one night after he had finished his assignments and had started reading scholarly articles on drowned bodies, as well as testimonials from people who had almost become victims to humanity’s lack of gills.

Now, mind you, he also was in full-swing with his newfound love of illicit substances, and he also researched how it felt to die from a drug overdose as well, and at the time of this research, he was experiencing deep and potent feelings of hopelessness. But, as his mind had already been set on possibly committing suicide through a drug overdose, and since that was the first option that he had thoroughly researched, drowning, as well and the other methods of killing oneself that he researched, such as shooting oneself in the head, could be labelled as curiosity and nothing more. A “might as well while I’m at it” sort of thing. Most links to articles on the effects of dying from drowning and being shot were linked to the pages on the effects of dying from a drug overdose, anyway.

And yet, despite opting for drug overdose at the time (he made his first attempt at ending his life in a crack den about four days after this research excursion and was promptly sectioned and sent to his first rehab facility), there were a variety of things that he remembered about drowning from that research. There were some things that proved to beneficial to him in his detective work, once he had enough motivation and purpose to start his consulting agency, but there were other things that he remembered about drowning that he remembered for more… and dare I say, _sentimental_ reasons.

There was one testimonial from a woman who had survived almost drowning in the Atlantic Ocean that had especially struck a chord with him. She had been on the beach outside of her home on the shores of Maine, and, taken by some inkling, she had waded into the water. Wanting to go further, she took off her jacket and some of the other pieces of clothing she had on and advanced yet deeper. She was almost neck-deep in the water when a riptide came in and sucked her out to sea. Panicking, she began to thrash around, trying to pull herself above the water. That only made her situation worse.

“Had I not remembered to swim parallel to the shore in case of a riptide, I wouldn’t be here today,” the woman told her local news reporter after she had come forward with the story. According the website on drowning that he had been perusing, the woman decided that it was important to go public with the incident so that more people in her area would practice better safety habits around beaches and in the water. “There was a moment there when I really thought I was going to die.”

When asked how it felt to be drowning, the woman replied, “Strangely warm. It’s strange because it’s the Atlantic, and that’s a pretty cold ocean, in my experience. But as I was in the water, an overwhelming feeling of warmth and comfort came over me. It was almost like I was being wrapped in a blanket underwater, if that makes any sense at all. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

He later learned that the feeling of warmth that she described was also noted among other drowning survivors, and the feeling itself was caused by the lungs filling with water after they had expended all their oxygen, as well as a lack of oxygen reaching the brain. But, for all his reasoning, he could not get the woman’s simile of being wrapped in a blanket out of his head. When he had overdosed, the time that he had spent on the verge of unconsciousness had been peaceful, but not as warm and comfortable as he had hoped. He made a rather morbid commitment in that first rehab facility that he would always chose drugs as his first method of killing himself, as the drugs eased him into death over a longer period of time rather than instantaneously or over a minute or so, but, if he should ever grow tired of the drugs’ affects, or if his tolerance grew to high to allow him to overdose, he would opt for drowning and see if he could experience that blanketing that the woman from Maine had spoke of.

Feeling as though you’ve been wrapped up in a warm blanket despite being surrounded in an inhospitable environment seemed like a desirable way to go out.

The Thames tossed and turned like a man griped with nightmares beneath him. Such a dirty, old river, but then again, London was a dirty, old city, and he was its “Savior,” so that made him as corrupt and ancient (in mind, at least) as both. The Thames was biologically dead. Thanks to stark amount of pollutants that humankind had dumped into its waters, as well as the nonnative species introduced to the river in the ballast water of trade ships, all the native wildlife of the Thames had died off, save for the exceptional seal that dared make its way into the city’s waterways.

This nasty, cold, historical river was to be his deathbed.

He sighed, watching his breath form clouds in front of his face and blow away. The hardest part about suicide attempts, for him, at least, was mustering up the courage to follow through with them. Once he had committed to following through with the attempt, he was fine. He could face death with open arms and his head held high, least someone find him and revive him before death overtook him completely, which according to his track record, had been every single time.

He had taken steps to avoid the chance he had of being revived. He had spent the latter half of his evening walking around London picking up fragments of brick and stuffing them into his coat pockets to help weigh himself down in the water, which, given that it was London, a city composed primarily of brick and concrete buildings, was not a very difficult task. He was just very particular about which particles of brick he wanted in his coat: the smaller and denser the better. He had also taken a hefty amount of morphine to give himself a feeling of weightlessness and to calm the few nerves he had surrounding facing his death.

His death was guaranteed. Even if first responders managed to pull him from the waters and attempt to resuscitate him, there was no way they would be successful in bringing him back to life. He shocked himself sometimes at how thorough he could be when devising plans to carry out the mundane tasks of his life, including the mundane task of bringing it to an end and finally coming to the peace he had always desired.

Westminster Bridge was the stage for his final theatrical demonstration. He chose this bridge because it was here that he could truly die in the way that was expected of him; he could die within sight of Big Ben and the London Eye, as he was just the same as they were: symbolic monuments of the modern British Empire and tourist attractions. Thanks to his international reputation, which he had yet to decide if he liked or not, he was liable to be approached on any given day by people from all sorts of places and asked to pose for selfies and give autographs and the like. If he deduced these people to be of moral character, he would give them a small smile as they stood in front of them with their mobiles in the air or scribble a quick signature on anything they wanted him to sign (within reason). It was the attention from the unwanted sources- the press, the jealous Yarders, the people who questioned his abilities, etc.- that got on his nerves and weakened his constitution.

“How do you do it?” he asked the London Eye. Though she was stationary for the evening, she was still alive, daring to shine a bright blue against a backdrop of yellow-lit skyscrapers and an inky sky. “I suppose it’s easy for you. You carry people up and around in circles, and no one complains. People have grown accustomed to you.”

He turned away from the Ferris wheel and back to the Thames. He was leaning forward on the edge of Westminster Bridge, gripping the concrete edge so hard that his knuckles turned white and watching as the tears that leaked from his eyes fell off the hook of his nose and onto that very edge.

“People still love you,” he croaked. “If you suddenly broke down one day, there would be droves of people hired to fix you. Your repairs would be the top priority of numerous people until you were functional again.

“I can’t say the same. I wish-oh, shit- I wish I could say the same. I’ve ruined so many lives…. I always have. And I do not deserve to be alive. I do not deserve to be loved.”

He began to quietly sob- the type of sob that manifests itself solely in the contortion of a person’s face and breathless cries. “You have no idea how many deaths were the consequences of my actions. The amount of pain I’ve caused cannot be forgiven. I have been told that I have been forgiven for my actions, but how can I believe them? When they see me, the memories of what I have done and how I have hurt them shall always surface. And whenever I try to fix things, I always end up making them worse, which adds more to the list of sins they can never, truly, forgive me for.

“I faked my own death. I did that to protect those I loved, but I only ended up hurting them more. I was foolish enough to widow my best friend and leave his child motherless. My friend- the person I love most in this world…”

He took a moment to collect his breath. “I do not deserve him. I never have. He is my only Sun- the only fixed point I have ever had in my life. I wish- I wish he were here. I have always wished him to be by my side when I died, but now that will not be a possibility will it? I’ve planned my suicide down to the last detail. He shall only hear of what is happening and what will happen after it has already happened. It is better for everyone this way. He shall get over me in the way that I could never get over him. And he will raise Rosie and grow old with some beautiful woman he’ll meet in a random place or what have you. And Lestrade will figure out another way to handle the influx of cases he gets. And Molly will find someone else to talk to in her spare time. And Mycroft will be so much the better for me being gone, since I give him so much stress. And Mrs. Hudson won’t have to worry about repairing the flat all the time. And Mummy won’t have to constantly deal with news of how much I’ve failed in life. And…” He started to sob much louder. “Oh, if only you were me! You would know why I’m here, and I would not feel the need to explain this to you, and you would not blame me for what I am about to do.”

Summoning an appropriate amount of his strength, he heaved himself up onto the edge of Westminster Bridge. The Thames continued to stir and whisper and splash beneath him, as if beckoning him home. The Thames would gladly be a set of open arms for him to fall into and rest in.

“I don’t have a note,” he whispered. “I went through all of the trouble to get here undetected, and I neglected to write a note.” He laughed. It was a rather masochistic thing to laugh at, and he knew this, but he laughed anyway. “How silly of me!”

He heard a pattering of heeled feet advance towards him from the east side of the bridge. He had hoped that there would be no witnesses to his jump, and he chose to come to the bridge at such an early hour to lessen the likelihood that he would be disturbed (Big Ben was about to toll for three o’clock in the morning). But it seemed that his last rites-type confession to his fellow London monuments had stalled his self-execution to the point where the likelihood of his being discovered increased. He held out a hand as a sort of ploy to prevent the woman from walking closer to him.

The pattering died off closer to his person than he would have liked. “Hey…” the voice that owned the pattering heels said.

“Don’t bother.” He lowered the hand. “There is nothing you could say that could change my mind.”

“Please, sir. I just want to help you. You don’t have to do this.”

He turned to look at her. She looked the businessy-type, obviously working a late night in one of the many government agencies in the area. Her blonde hair was a disheveled mess, likely from a combination of staying up this late, the wind, and her running over to see about him. She seemed middle-aged, and by his calculations, she was in her early forties. Her eyes were bagged and deeply set into her skull. Her gait told him that, despite her age, she had recently been faced with some sort of trauma, likely relating to someone in her family. He wondered if she might have recently become a widow, but he turned away from her before he could deduce her further.

She looked too much like John to him, and her expression of concern made him feel guilty and selfish.

“Please, sir. I am begging you. Please come down.”

“… And why should I?” The drugs that he had taken earlier to further numb his descent into the cold, dark depths of the Thames were starting to make him dizzy. He would have to convince this woman to leave him alone quickly, as he was minutes away from losing his motor function, which would render jumping rather difficult, and he was not about to make this woman watch him jump into the Thames.

“I’m sure someone would miss you if you died. I have a feeling someone would. I- I just know it!”

“You’re not used to confronting people in this position, are you?” His lips spread into a smirk. This was _not_ how he had wanted this night to unfold.

“Well, no! But sir, please! I am trying! And I’ll say it again! Please come down!”

“I’m sorry. I’m afraid I cannot do that. For your own safety, please walk away.”

“You know I can’t do that, Mr. Holmes!” the woman exclaimed. “That’s right. I know who you are. And you and I both know my ass will be on the line if I let you jump. Not to mention, I and the rest of the world will have to deal with your loss. What was that you posted on your blog a few months ago? That’s right, Mr. Holmes! I read your blog and Dr. Watson’s. ‘Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off it.’ Yes, that’s it! That’s what you said. You said it to that Smith girl who visited you. So, Mr. Holmes, please come down! Come down, please! Please! Come down! Please!”

He kept his gaze on the water. His vision grew foggy. “I don’t know,” he murmured. “I don’t know what to do.”

The woman heard him. “You can figure something out. I know you can. You can overcome this, whatever it is. Just please come down! Please!”

He felt extremely light-headed. He knew he had to decide whether he was dying or not, and soon.

“Alright,” he said after a few seconds of contemplation. “I’ll come down.”

The woman was elated. “Oh, thank God! Thank God! Thank God! Thank God!”

But as he crouched upon the edge of the bridge, as he was planning on crouching before extending one foot backwards onto the pavement and then the other, the lightheadedness proved to be too much for him, and his vision become overrun with black dots, and his balance became off-kilter, and he tumbled into the Thames despite having resolved to abort his jump.

The woman screamed a scream loud and shrill and frightened enough that it was a wonder that the glass on the clock face of Big Ben was not shattered. She immediately called out for people to come and help, and she approached the edge of the bridge and called down to him.

“Mr. Holmes! Try to stay calm! I’ll get some help! Oh dear. Oh dear. Oh, dear oh dear oh dear…”

He floated along, in shock at what had just transpired. The small waves of the Thames tossed him around, as if the river was juggling him back and forth between its hands. The cold water had soaked into his clothes, and combined with the bricks in the pockets of his coat, floating became quite difficult for him. The shock and the freezing temperature of the water stiffened his muscles and made thrashing in the water to stay afloat a near impossibility. In only a few moments of being in that dirty river, his entire body lay beneath the surface except for his face.

More voices had joined the woman’s back up on the bridge. Even with his ears clogged with the polluted water of the Thames, he could still hear their concerned cries.

“Just… stop!” he croaked. He knew that, even though he was planning to abort his suicide attempt, he had no choice but to accept his death now. The conditions turned the odds against his survival. “W-w-whatever y-y-our doing, it-it isn’t worth it! There isn’t a-a-a-anyth-thing you c-c-c-can do for me n-n-n-now!”

The water, despite how cold it was, burned his skin. He had yet to feel the warm embrace that the drowning survivors spoke of. If anything, he had never felt more frightened in his life, save for when he was forced to jump from a structure previously or when he almost died previously from having been shot in the chest.

His body was slowly being lowered into the depths by the water. It was now starting to slosh over his forehead and cloud his eyes. He knew it would not be long before his entire face was submerged.

Up on the bridge, a crowd had gathered from nothing.

“L-l-let me go…” he whispered. “S-s-s-silence. P-p-please. S-silence.”

A mixture of sirens and flashing lights had been thrown into the mixture of traumatic fervor on the bridge. It was a wonder that none of the pedestrians had jumped in to save him, but instead, they all had relied on the proper personnel to fish him out, including the woman whom had tried to talk him down from the bridge’s edge. He found himself oddly thankful for that. It would be safer for them to reach him if he was a still corpse. He also knew that even if he had been saved from death in this instance, it would not be too long before his black moods would overtake him again, and thoughts of taking his own life would cloud his mind once more.

Big Ben started to chime. It was now three o’clock in the morning exactly.

He managed a chuckle. _Such a lovely tune,_ he thought. _I’d never noticed how beautiful that chime was. Isn’t that a shame?_

The water tossed itself over his face and completely submerged him underwater. The water quickly filled his lungs, as he made quick work of exhaling all his oxygen supply, which bubbled up to the surface of the river, and breathing in as much water as he could. He experienced a tingling sensation in his limbs, and a feeling of warmth and peace formed in his stomach area and spread throughout his form. _Ah, there’s the rub…_

He looked up at the surface of the water, and despite the waves on the surface, and the fact that he continued to sink slowly into the depths, he could see the night sky, with the Moon in her radiant glory and the stars to accompany her, as well the lights of the London Eye and the Parliament Building. They looked just as stunning in the water as they did on Westminster Bridge.

With the last bit of strength that he had, Sherlock Holmes folded his hands over his chest contentedly, and as he continued to sink, and as death continued to enclose him, he thought of how amazing the nothingness that he hoped would greet him would be to spend the rest of eternity in.

And that was the position the divers found him in, when the emergency personnel finally made it into the water where he lay.


	2. Reactions (Part One)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoa! It has been a hot-minute since I've updated this. Sorry about the wait. I'll try to be more consistent.  
> Also, I'm sorry if this chapter lacks in quality in comparison to the previous one. I've been working on an actual story for an independent study, and I'm also planning a Femlock fanfiction inspired by The Secret Life of Bees. So yeah. I've got a lot going on.  
> My apologies for any mistakes that I missed.  
> I hope you enjoy it, and thank you for all the support you have given this work thus far! I really appreciate it!  
> I do not own BBC Sherlock. I do own Hamlet, though. Because Hamlet is in the public domain. Which is FREAKING AWESOME.  
> -WeWillForeverBeYoung

**WARNING: IF YOU ARE EASILY TRIGGERED BY MENTIONS OF SUICIDE OR ATTEMPTS AT SUICIDE BEING DEPICTED IN FICTION, PLEASE DO NOT READ THIS FANFIC. PLEASE EXERCISE DISCRETION AND CLICK OFF THIS FANFIC. PRACTICE SELF CARE AND SPEND YOUR TIME WITH ANOTHER FANFIC.**

_Enter Priest, the Corpse of OPHELIA, LAERTES and Mourners following; KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, their trains, &c.         _

_**HAMLET:** The queen, the courtiers: who is this they follow?           _

_And with such maimed rites? This doth betoken_

_The corse they follow did with desperate hand_

_Fordo its own life: 'twas of some estate._

_Couch we awhile, and mark._

_(Retiring with HORATIO. )_

**_LAERTES:_ ** _What ceremony else?_

 **_HAMLET:_ ** _That is Laertes,_

_A very noble youth: mark._

**_LAERTES:_ ** _What ceremony else?_

 **_First Priest:_ ** _Her obsequies have been as far enlarged_

_As we have warranty: her death was doubtful;_

_And, but that great command o'ersways the order,_

_She should in ground unsanctified have lodg'd_

_Till the last trumpet: for charitable prayers,_

_Shards, flints and pebbles should be thrown on her;_

_Yet here she is allow'd her virgin crants,_

_Her maiden strewments and the bringing home_

_Of bell and burial._

**_LAERTES:_ ** _Must there no more be done?_

 **_First Priest:_ ** _No more be done!_

_We should profane the service of the dead_

_To sing a requiem and such rest to her_

_As to peace-parted souls._

**_LAERTES:_ ** _Lay her i' the earth:_

_And from her fair and unpolluted flesh_

_May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest,_

_A ministering angel shall my sister be,_

_When thou liest howling._

**_HAMLET:_ ** _What, the fair Ophelia!_

 **_QUEEN GERTRUDE:_ ** _Sweets to the sweet: farewell!_

_(Scattering flowers.)_

_I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife;_

_I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid,_

_And not have strew'd thy grave._

**_LAERTES:_ ** _O, treble woe_

_Fall ten times treble on that cursed head,_

_Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense_

_Deprived thee of! Hold off the earth awhile,_

_Till I have caught her once more in mine arms:_

_Leaps into the grave._

_Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead,_

_Till of this flat a mountain you have made,_

_To o'ertop old Pelion, or the skyish head_

_Of blue Olympus._

-William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Act V, scene I, lines 202-242

~

                Of all people, the first to hear of Sherlock Holmes’s death was Sergeant Sally Donovan, and she happened to hear of his death due to her being in the area at the time of his drowning.

She had decided to visit one of her favorite pubs, the Westminster Arms, after a twelve-hour shift. It was Saturday night, after all, and she had managed to get caught up on all the paperwork she needed to file for that week’s cases before midnight. (That’s something they never told them at the Academy-how much paperwork a cop had to sort through and sweat over and file.) Sally felt that she deserved a little reward for fulfilling the expectations her superiors had for her, and that reward equated with liquor, and that liquor needed to be handed to her by the handsomest bartender she had ever encountered at the most picturesquely located pub in the city.

Sally Donovan was halfway through her gin and tonic when the flashing blue and white lights of an NHS ambulance appeared briefly in the front window of the pub. Her police instincts had kicked in when she first heard the sirens, yet she did not feel up to checking up on whatever situation the ambulance was needed for. But when two Met police cars zoomed by the pub, lights on and heading in the same direction of the ambulance, Sally decided to go and see what help she could be. In hindsight, this was probably not the best idea, since Sally was off-duty and tired and likely would have not been much help to those on the scene, but also because of what she found when she arrived at the scene.

Following the sirens and the flashing lights had brought Sally to the center of Westminster Bridge. There, she found the ambulance and police cars she had seen earlier, as well as two others and a crowd of people who were miraculously silent and none of which had given in to the modern reflex of videotaping whatever was happening on their mobiles.

“Let me through,” she half-said, half-shouted to those in the back of the crowd. “I’m a police officer.” She pulled her badge out of her pocket and flashed it haphazardly. “Let me through.”

They parted like the Red Sea, each one looking at her with the same look of shock and terror as she passed. She had been a cop in the city of London long enough to have had to respond to tragic and terrifying situations involving lots of death and damage, but never had she seen a crowd of on-looking civilians as utterly shaken as those that parted the way for her that night.

She approached one of the constables standing near the yellow police tape and keeping watch over the crowd.

“What’s happened?” she asked, showing him her badge.

He looked at the badge and then up into her eyes. “There’s been a suicide,” he replied, with a bit of Yorkshire-sounding accent.

“On Westminster Bridge?”

“Yes. The poor soul who did it seems to have loaded his pockets and jumped into the Thames.”

Sally sighed, shaking her head. “Damn. The things that some will do.”

“Indeed, madam. Indeed.”

They stood for a few moments in silence.

“Sergeant Donovan? That’s your name, right, madam?”

“Hmm? Oh, yes. It is.”

“You- ah, well.” The constable rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. “I’d rather have someone break it to you now than for you to hear it later. I wouldn’t tell you if I felt you couldn’t handle it.”

Sally felt her stomach drop. “What is it?”

“Sergeant, you know the man who committed suicide tonight. You’ve worked with him.”

 _Oh no._ Her thoughts began to race so quickly in her head that she couldn’t distinguish them from one another. _What if it’s Lestrade? Did the divorce finally get to him? Was he struggling, and I didn’t notice?_  

“Who was it?” she asked, keeping her serious, policeman mask on her face.

                The constable hesitated before replying: “The man who drowned himself here tonight was none other than Sherlock Holmes.”

                Sally felt all the breath rush out of her. “You’re not serious.”

                “I’m afraid I’m very serious, madam.”

                “No. No. Not Fr- Sherlock. He wouldn’t do something like this. He- “

                “Sergeant Donovan.”

                “Sherlock _knows_ how to fake this type of stuff, alright? He’s done it once before. I swear, that twat’s probably doing it now, too!”

                The constable held his hands up to try to calm her down. “Listen. Please, listen. We did everything we could. When we pulled him from the water, he was unresponsive. All attempts at resuscitation failed. There was nothing else that could be done.”

                She couldn’t believe her ears. “Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus God.”

                “I’m sorry, Sergeant Donovan.”

                “No, no. Don’t be sorry.” Her eyes grew warm with tears. Why was she crying? “I’m not the one who died tonight.”

                The emotionless mask slipped off, and her hands instinctively flew up over her face as she started to sob. “And y-you know what the worst part about all of this is?”

                “What?” the constable asked, regretting his decision of telling her who the suicide victim was.

                She removed her hands from her face and looked upon him for a moment. “That I’m likely one of the first people that he interacted with on a weekly basis that knows about this, and I’m not sure he would want me to be the one to know about it first.” She looked away. “Not that he can care much now, but…”

~

                Phillip Anderson was up late that night watching home-shopping television. His credit card was still nestled in his wallet, and he certainly had enough kitchenware in his kitchen to last him through the next five years at least, but there he was, watching a woman trying to sell him paisley-decorated casserole dishes. He hadn’t known how he had gotten onto the home-shopping channel. But what he did know was that he was in a mood to feel and think about nothing at all for as long as possible.

He had just recently lost the visitation rights to his kids. Sharron thought it would be best, even if he had gotten his old job back, and even if he had been cleared by a psychiatrist to be of sound mind, that she appeal to the court to have his visitation removed, using his time in the Empty Hearse and the case he staged to attract Sherlock Holmes as grounds. Her appeal was granted, and Phillip Anderson lost his two weekends a month and gained a feeling of utter failure. It was likely his drive to forget and to think about nothing, least of all his own pitiful excuse for a life, that drove him to watching a home- shopping special.

He was in this position when he received a call from Sally Donovan.

Groggy, he picked up his mobile from the coffee table in front of him and accepted the call. “Mm. Hello?”

“Phillip,” came the reply on the other end. The voice was shaky.

“Sally? Is that you?”

“Yes.” She hiccupped. “Yes. Phillip… Phillip, something terrible has happened.”

“What? What’s going on?” He was on high-alert now. “Are you hurt? What’s happened?”

“Oh, Philly…”

Anderson knew it must be serious now. Donovan only called him “Philly” during their intimate moments back when he was having an affair with her.

                “Sherlock killed himself,” she said. “For real this time.”

                Phillip’s eyes were focused on the woman showing different dishes being cooked in the casserole dishes, but his brain registered none of what he was seeing. “What?”

                “You heard me. Sherlock Holmes is dead. He killed himself tonight.”

                “How? Why?” He stood up looking around for his keys. “Do they know why, yet?”

                “I don’t know, Philly. I don’t know.”

                “Look, are you okay?”

                “No. No I’m not. I was just there at the scene. I saw him. I saw his body under a blanket.”

                “I’m coming. Where are you?”

                She sniffled. “I’m at a phone booth near Westminster Bridge.”

                “Okay. Hold on, love. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

                “Okay.” She hung up.

~

                Mike Stamford was up late that night grading essays for one of the classes he taught at Bart’s- immunology. When he was but a young pup in medical school, he always thought the amount of work required by his professors was obscene, but now that he taught such classes, he realized that the teacher had the glorious job of reading and grading the essays that were assigned. He had thirty-two naïve kids in his immunology class. He was on his sixteenth paper when he decided to give his eyes a break and watch some telly.

                Seeing nothing that interested him on the major entertainment channels despite it being a Saturday night and all the critically-acclaimed shows airing new episodes ready for his viewing, Mike turned it on the news channel. The screen showed a rather unprofessionally expressive, blonde news reporter clad in a black winter overcoat standing on Westminster Bridge. Around her were the flashing lights of NHS and Met vehicles, creating a sort of halo effect around her head. Mike likened reporters who looked like her to the Angel of Death, since even though they looked angelic, they were usually reporting on a tragedy when such effect occurred.

                And then Mike read the headline.

                **SHERLOCK HOLMES DEAD IN THAMES RIVER**

                Just like that. With nothing else to accompany it other than the BBC logo and scrolling text describing the latest Brexit news underneath.

                A greying man in a tux appeared to the left of the screen.

                “Now, Shelby, I know this news may come as a shock to those watching,” he began. “But what do we know about Mr. Holmes’ death so far?”

                “Patrick, as much as it pains me to say this, this appears to have been an act of suicide on behalf of Mr. Holmes. And unfortunately, it appears to have been real this time.”

                “I see.” Patrick looked down at his glass desk and pressed his lips into a thin line.

                “The scene here is very tragic, Patrick.” Shelby gestured to the surrounding area, but the camera remained focused on her. “First responders and witnesses appear to be in a state of perpetual shock. Given Mr. Holmes’ accomplishments in domestic safety and police affairs, and the amount of lives that he has impacted not only in the U.K. but internationally, this news is a rather unfortunate tragedy in the minds of many.”

                “Very tragic, indeed,” Patrick replied as Mike leaned back into his sofa, on the verge of tears.

                He had introduced Sherlock to John to prevent something like this from happening. They both were so lost, from what he could remember, and both were not far away from the grave in terms of both mental and physical condition; Sherlock was just out of rehab and still struggling with hidden, unspoken depression, and John had just been released from the Army hospital and was obviously suffering from PTSD. They were so alike in so many ways. Mike was so happy when Sherlock started deducing John, and when John reacted to his deductions positively. If anything, they might be able to heal each other in the time that they were flat mates. Mike’s own motivations of match-making were second only to protecting the two men’s well-being.

                But Mike knew the time that they had been friends had been rocky, first cut short due to that whole Moriarty fiasco, and second to Mary’s death and the baby, though they always seemed to make up and become friends again after all their relationship’s obstacles. He had hope for them, yet it apparently was not shared by one person in particular.

                Sherlock had been an aloof and unquieted soul ever since Mike had met him. Mike had been kind to him and had been the one to allow him access to the lab at St. Bart’s initially, and Mike knew that not everyone was as kind to such people, least of all Sherlock, who issued all the details of people’s personal lives right back to them as though he were a mirror. And Mike also knew that being a detective and dealing with stressful, complex, and often life-and-death cases had their toll on a human being.

              He just didn’t expect Sherlock to crack. Of all people, it couldn’t be him.

                Mike took the essays strewn across the coffee table, stacked them, shoved them in a folder, and got up to make himself a drink. It was going to be a very long night, and a very long week, at that.

~

“Ms. Adler?”

“Mm. Yes?”

“Didn’t you know this man?”

Irene Adler lifted herself off her pillow to better see what her girlfriend was looking at. She and Kate had just enjoyed a lovely evening together in their New York apartment, and they were relaxing after their _fun_ to better prepare themselves for sleep when Kate decided to check her phone. 

Irene saw that Kate was looking at a news article, but she couldn’t quite make out what is was.

“What is that?”

Kate turned her phone’s screen towards Irene. A picture of a chaotic Westminster Bridge was at the top of the screen, and beneath it was an article being frequently updated with the latest news on the suicide of Sherlock Holmes.

“Didn’t you know this man?” Kate asked again. “Didn’t he cause us trouble some time ago?”

Irene’s lip quivered. “Yes. Yes, he did.” She took the phone from Kate. “Is this real?”

“It looks to be.”

She scrolled through the rest of the article. “Oh no… No. This can’t be. This can’t be so.”

“Love?” Kate took the phone back, threw it onto the bed, and placed a reassuring hand on Irene’s shoulder. “Love? Are you alright?”

She shook her head, her long, brunette swishing back and forth. “No. I’m not alright.

“We need to get back to London.” Irene got up from the bed and put on her bathrobe, which was sitting on a hook on the wall next to the bed. “We need to get back to London now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter we'll get the reactions of: Mycroft Holmes, Mr. and Mrs. Holmes, Mrs. Hudson, Greg Lestrade, Angelo, Molly Hooper, and finally, John Watson!
> 
> Also, sorry that some of these are indented, and some of them are not. I can't figure out the bloody formatting for this website. I'm an amateur artist, not a computer programmer! XD


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